Glacier Part 1...

We got home this past Monday from our annual trip to Montana.

 We drove as far as Banks Lake in Eastern Washington our first day.  This is one of my most favorite places in the world. We set up camp at Jones Bay and then went to our favorite hidden swimming spot. 

(My mother-in-law took the above three pictures of Banks Lake.)

Our first evening in Glacier at St. Mary it started raining right after we set up the tent.  Since we have a nice big tent we put our camping chairs in it and played a game of Scrabble.  My mother-in-law Bonita won and was very proud of herself.  :)

 The first hike we did was to Apikuni Falls near Many Glacier.  Right when we got on the trail we saw this little guy, a small back bear.  He was busy eating berries and could have cared less we were there. 

The twinnies.  My mother-in-law Bonita and her sister Bonnie. Bonnie and Frank live in Kalispell and do all kinds of climbing and hiking in Glacier. 

Me and my hubby.  Surprisingly he didn't make a funny face for this pic.

 Daniel held on to a string on Daisy's pack and called himself the orange caboose.

The caboose is wondering what the hold up is.

Almost to the falls.

Apikuni Falls

Had to bundle up to eat lunch next to the falls, it was cold and wet!

Me and my sweet boy.

The second bear we saw on this hike.  It too was busy eating berries and could care less about us.  Rue did have his bear spray out and ready though.  Encountering these two bears actually helped calm my fears of camping in bear territory.

To be continued...

Fall is on the way...but it's not here yet!!

I am not ready for fall to arrive and thankfully our weather here in the Northwest isn't ready either.  We had a light sprinkling of rain last night, the first in quite a while but the rest of the week is suppose to be dry and sunny with the end of the week being in the high 70's.  I absolutely LOVE autumn but I am just not ready yet.  I still have hikes I want to do and after our long winter I still feel like I need to soak in some more sun before another winter sets in. 

This is a picture of my father-in-law George and Daniel up at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.  We camped at Heart O'the Hills and drove up to Hurricane Ridge one evening.  We went on a little walk and enjoyed the evening light. 

The next day we hiked up Hurricane Hill.

Daisy and my mother-in-law Bonita.

Relaxing at the top.

My parents camped with us for 4 nights.  My mom made a shower set up.  That's what the blue tarp is.  They have a shower bag that has a shower head.  It worked great! 

This is how my dad slept.  He was more comfortable sleeping in his chair than in the van.  We called him bear bait.  :)

We did a lovely little hike to Marymere Falls near Lake Crescent.

Marymere Falls

 My mom watched Daniel for us one day so Rue and I could take off and do a nice big hike just the two of us.  We drove out on Obstruction Point Road.  It is the old survey road back in the day when they wanted to put a road through the Olympics but when they saw the scenery it would cut right through they abandoned the project.  You can still drive out on the dirt road.  It is 8 miles out to Obstruction Point.  The road goes through some amazing scenery but it's not a road you would want to drive a little car on.  You probably could if you wanted, but I wouldn't want to.  The road starts at Hurricane Ridge and it feels like you are driving right over the edge of Hurricane Ridge.  It was a lot of fun!  

This is looking back toward the Obstruction Point parking lot.  In the far left of the picture you can see the road going up and over a hill.  

Mt. Olympus.  I had never seen this view of Mt. Olympus before.  We hiked out towards Grand Lake.

Starting the descent down towards Grand Lake.  We didn't go all the way to Grand Lake but we found a nice little "lake" to eat our lunch next to.

Rue wasted no time "jumping" in.  He's actually lying down in the picture.  

It was so great to be out on a hike all by ourselves.  That is my kind of date!  We are both looking forward to doing more hiking and exploring in this area.  We are also talking about doing our first backpacking trip in the next year or so.  

Summer Vacation, Part 1: Jones Bay...

One of our favorite places to go in the summer is Banks Lake in Eastern Washington.  I love the scab lands, the heat, the canyons, climbing all over rocks, the smell of sage in the hot air and swimming in our favorite swimming spot every evening.

That's Daisy way up there on the rocks.  My favorite thing to do in the evening after we've had dinner, gone swimming and Daniel is in bed is to head out to those rocks and find a nice spot to sit and enjoy the evening breeze, the smell of sage (did I mention I love the smell of sage) and soak in the view.

 

This is the view from my favorite sitting spot.

This is the view looking the other way. 

 

Our home away from home.  Notice all the ropes holding the tent down.  These came in handy for a huge storm that blew through.

 

Daniel working out the call of nature in nature.  :) 

 

Checking out the Grand Coulee Dam.  Daisy taught Daniel to call it the "water wall".  She didn't think he should say that other word. :)

 My father-in-law took me on a canoe paddle the last evening they were there.  

Sunset from the canoe.

 

This is Steamboat Rock.  Notice the dark clouds behind it.  This was the tail end of a massive storm that blew through.  Thankfully we saw it coming, secured everything and headed into town.  Rue, Daniel and Daisy went into Safeway and I stayed in the car.  There was lightening everywhere, the wind was blowing so hard the car was shaking and I don't mean a little bit, it felt like someone was standing on the bumper jumping up and down!  Signs were blowing down the street and I thought for sure there must have been a tornado.  Rue said the clerk in the store said a storm that strong wasn't common.  After things calmed down we headed back to camp and my amazing hubby had secured the tent so well you couldn't even tell a storm had blown through.  

The second night we were there we had a run in with a rattle snake.  The dog was tied up outside the front of the tent with her water and food.  We had just settled down to bed and we heard the loudest rattle I had ever heard.  We both knew right away what it was.  Rue could see it right next to Starbuck's water dish.  Thankfully Starbuck was trying to get away from it and not trying to attack it.  She was pulling on her leash as far as she could.  Rue opened the tent a little bit, quickly unhooked the leash from her collar and pulled her into the tent.  Shortly after that the snake disappeared.  I was picturing it slithering under our tent but it was gone.  

Our in-laws ended up leaving early and we still had 10 days left of vacation.  Since we were only 5 1/2 hours from Rue's aunt and uncle in Kalispell, Montana we decided to give them a call and see if they would like some company.  They were very happy to have us come and visit them.

To be continued...

Home again...

Hi everyone!  We have been home from our vacation for almost two weeks now.  I most definitely will have a post up soon about our very fun, very unexpected vacation.  There was a rattlesnake, massive storm, a blown tire and unexpectedly ending up in Montana and Glacier.  It was a great trip!  I have a baby shower I am doing for a friend from work this weekend so I am pretty busy this week.  I will be posting again on a regular basis starting next week!

Campfire Cooking...

Saturday evening I did some campfire cooking.  My parents came over to enjoy the meal with us.  My hubby just bought me the tripod and cast iron dutch oven you see in the top picture.  I didn't actually get to use them because the dutch oven arrived in the mail earlier that day and I still needed to season it before I used it.  I just wanted to see them set up.  :)

 I made a couple piles of charcoal and had a little wood fire that I burned down to coals.  You can't tell in the picture but those beans are bubbling away.  I wrapped corn in foil and also made little biscuits wrapped in foil.  In the dutch oven at the top of the picture were the pork ribs.  I put charcoal underneath and on top of the pot to bake the ribs. 

I accidentally made up the biscuit recipe.  I added one too many ingredients but everyone said they turned out absolutely delicious and my hubby preferred them to the original recipe.  So I am going to make them that way every time! I will share the recipe in an upcoming post.  I flattened the little balls of dough into little disks and put them in foil.  I made sure to leave space in the foil so they could puff up when cooking.  I rotated the little tents of foil half way through baking time on the coals.  I am taking everyone's word for it that they turned out perfect since I can't eat gluten.  This is one of the few times when I lament my gluten-free-ness, when I make something scrumptious and can't try it myself. After they are done baking they have a campfire, rustic look that I love.

RIBS!! Steaming hot, fall off the bone, BBQ saucy goodness, ribs! 

My mom had her campfire biscuits with butter and honey.  The corn didn't cook as fast as the biscuits so we ate the corn last.  I know this meal was lacking in greens but that's okay, we eat lots of them the rest of the time.  This is the kind of meal my hubby wants when we are camping.  A good hearty meal after a day of hiking and playing.  I am glad to get to practice my campfire cooking skills before we go camping that way I can fix any kinks before hand.  Plus I just plain love cooking outside. 

The funniest thing though was that while I was in the middle of cooking this meal outside the power in our whole neighborhood went out.  So while some people were probably heading out to grab some fast food or take-out I was cooking away in the backyard not even effected by the outage.  When the power came back on about an hour later Rue said "Oh good, you can cook dinner now!". :) 

I had to include this picture of my handsome men. :)